African violet leaves slowly brown and rot

3 years ago

last modified: 3 years ago

Hi,

I have been raising 3 African violets I rescued from the garbage heap at Lowe’s 3 years ago. They cost me $1 for the lot of them. I didn’t even want them as they looked so bad, but my girlfriend convinced me to give them a chance. I was skeptical that they would survive, but I managed to nurse them back to health and they have been thriving.

The largest one is now 15 inches across and the next largest is 10 inches across. The smallest has lagged and is only about 6 inches across but it is the one that blooms the most. I bought them about 2 inches across in a thimble of a pot and about 1.5 years ago transplanted them to larger 4-inch pots.

I water about once per week, sometimes less if the soil isn’t super dry yet. I add a weak liquid violet fertilizer about every 3rd time.

Two weeks ago I was surprised to see the smallest violet had droopy leaves that were brown at the edges. These were the oldest, biggest leaves on the plant. I sometimes remove old leaves as they age out so I removed a couple and checked back. A few days later they had gotten more brown and rotten looking and the green stems had started to turn to jelly. Fearing disease I cut off any leaves that looked even partially brown and stopped watering.

Tonight I checked and even more leaves were falling victim and more stems were rotted. The stems remained green but were like jelly. I pulled the plant out of the pot and it hardly has any roots. I was expecting/fearing black rotted roots but was surprised to find almost none. There was just the taproot which still looked healthy enough and there are still a handful of healthy looking leaves.

I cut away anything remotely gelatinous, dumped the soil, and repotted with the crown just touching the surface. Was that the right thing to do? Should I use some sort of anti-fungal or antibacterial?

I am at a loss for why this one plant is afflicted. The others receive the same care and look fine - at least for now - although obviously their growth rates have differed so maybe this one has always been weaker. Should I repot the others, too, to inspect their roots and prevent the same fate?

I am so proud of my rescue violets! Advice is appreciated.

Featured Answer

Rebecca/N. IN/z6A

3 years ago

Pur filters do not filter out chloramine. Only an RO/DI will filter it out. We got a letter from our water co. 2-3yrs ago that due to the increased people load, they were going to start adding chloramine. so we bought a pur filter but it only reduces lead, chlorine chlorine, certain minerals- but not chloramine.I catch rainwater, use water from my dehumidifiers or use half-drank bottled water that people leave around the house. if none of those are available, I go to Meijer abd refill my gallon water jugs for $.30/gal.

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Comments (8)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years ago
pix would sure help

not letting the media ever dry.. might be a sign of overwatering.. which could have led to root rot ..

media does wear out.. and when it does.. you have watering problems... that might be complicating the issues ..

i never rescued an AV when it got that gelatinous ...

sterilize all the tools you used before you go palying with other plants ...

i also never thought of AV a long lived plants ... yeah.. im sure grandma had one for decades.. but al in all.. they can be rather short lived .. bigbox is not known for carrying heirloom plants .... who knows what they were selling ... probably the purple one.. the pink one.. and the white one.. lol ...

ken
Campbell1000
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
Do you water with water from the tap ?

Your symptoms align with what I experienced from Chloramine (used to clean and maintain pipes) from our local water suppliers. Many municipal water suppliers are moving to the use of Chloramine to keep underground piping clean.

I use grocery jugged Spring water now ... and have never had a similar problem since.
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dimitrig
Original Author
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago

I do use tap water, but it is filtered with a Pur carbon filter. If it was an issue with the water wouldn’t all three violets have a problem?

So far my treatment seems to be working in that all the remaining leaves still look good.
aegis1000
3 years ago
I found that some of my violets were more susceptible to Chloramine poisoning than others. Some I lost, ... while others seemed unaffected. Your repotting should help for a time, ... until the Chloramine builds up again in the soil.

Chloramine filtering requires very specific a very specific type of filter. It was easier for me to just use jugged Spring water instead.

https://www.freshwatersystems.com/blogs/blog/how-to-remove-chloramines-from-water

https://products.geappliances.com/appliance/gea-support-search-content?contentId=18724
dimitrig thanked aegis1000
Sherry8aNorthAL
3 years ago
I used to have a fish tank and there is an additive to neutralize the chlorine and chloramine for the fish. I still have some. do you think it would work for the violets?
Campbell1000
3 years ago
I tried the fish-tank additive (for my African Violets) ... and it was more trouble than it was worth. How much and how frequent to use was never really clear, ... I never saw any positive results, ... and it was just an additional step in watering.

I found purchasing grocery Spring Water (at $.50 - $1.00 per gallon) to be much easier to manage ...
Sherry8aNorthAL
3 years ago
Thanks. I used to use 8 drops in a gallon of water for my fish tank. Long years ago, I just left the water over night for the chlorine to evaporate, but they have added chloramine to the water here and it kills the fish.

I think that is why I am having trouble with violets and dracaena. My last violet went the same way as the OP described.